Diurnal variation of rainfall in the Yangtze River Valley during the spring-summer transition from TRMM measurements

Abstract

A 12 year archive of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) rain rate is used to document the regionality of diurnal rainfall cycle in the Yangtze River Valley (YRV). The regional rain peaks, local phase shifts, rain event's behavior, and related seasonal change from March to August are examined. In the middle reach of YRV, rainfall appears mainly in early morning and displays a distinct local shift of diurnal phase. Such features are well established at each presummer (from May to June) and result from the eastward migrating events with a late night growth in size. They are supported by the low-level convergence that moves from the east slope of the Tibetan Plateau to the middle reach of YRV, as the deviated wind vector rotates clockwise to enhance southerlies at late night and southwesterlies in the morning. In the lower reach of YRV, however, one observes an eruption of morning rainfall with less local difference in diurnal phase. Morning rainfall is active in presummers of some years but suppressed in some others, contributing greatly to the variance of rainfall budget and resulting in anomalous wet/dry seasons. It is found to arise from a local growth of rain events rather than the migrating events from the middle reach. A majority of these organized convections prefer to form and develop in a belt-shaped zone where the nocturnal southwesterlies of warm/moist air impinge on the Meiyu front in the lower troposphere. © 2012 by the American Geophysical Union.